


Drunk On A Plane

by jadedace



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 06:52:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11504025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadedace/pseuds/jadedace
Summary: The product of listening to too much country music. Poe gets dumped and meets a gorgeous steward named Finn. Purely fluff oneshot. Contains small mentions of Darkpilot and Kylux.





	Drunk On A Plane

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know plane protocols, but I'm fairly certain I got it a bit more right than Dierks Bentley. Also I'm so sorry this is the fluffiest thing I've ever written. But you're reading it, so. Enjoy?

“I’m sorry, Poe.”

Ben’s words rang with the crushing finality of funeral bells, but Poe didn’t feel anything. No grief, no rage, no nothing. He was staring at the ring in Ben’s fingers, glistening like a tear drop on his fiancé’s pale skin—well, ex-fiancé, now—and feeling…nothing. 

“I don’t understand,” Poe said in a monotone voice, trying to process what he was hearing. The wedding was less than a month away. This _wasn’t happening._

Ben pushed the ring towards Poe, almost begging him to take it back. “I can’t go through with this.”

There was sadness now, heartbreak, a feeling of desperation. He would do anything, _say_ anything, to get Ben to take back those words. Poe clasped Ben’s hand in his. The other looked away uncomfortably. 

“Ben, I know I’m always busy with work, but we can _fix_ this. You don’t have to end it, we can talk through it, get help—your mom was always suggesting couple’s counseling, maybe we could give it a shot—“

“This isn’t about making it work, Poe,” Ben protested. His hands balled into fists against Poe’s palms. “There’s someone else.”

Those three words hit Poe square in the chest. He felt his already aching heart snap in two. “What?”

Ben sighed and pulled his hands from Poe’s, leaving the ring behind. “There’s someone else. And there’s _been_ someone else, almost since day one.”

“Who?”

“His name is Armitage. He TA’s in my ROTC classes.”

Poe was stunned. He knew Armitage—a sulky, wiry ginger who was never seen without his impeccable uniform and matching scowl. 

“Mom hates him,” Ben continued, “and she loves you, and I thought I could make her happy by marrying you. But I can’t go through with this.”

The heartbreak was fresh, but there was something else growing in Poe’s chest. A bitterness, an anger that made his vision go red. “So you led me on—for _months—_ to please your mom. You said _yes_ to please your mom. Never thinking about what it would do to _me_ when you inevitably decided that pleasing Leia wasn’t worth it?”

“I’m sorry, Poe.”

“Don’t bother being sorry,” Poe snarled. He jammed the ring—a lovely tungsten band with gold inlays—into his pocket. “Fuck you. And get the hell out of my house.”

To his credit, Ben looked properly sorry and anguished. But it could all be an act, seeing as how he’d faked a two year relationship so convincingly. Poe hadn’t even _thought_ there was someone else. There had been no clues, no tells, no strange texts on his lover’s phone. There had been only what Poe wrongly thought was a perfect relationship. 

Poe glared at the door long after Ben left through it. Then he poured himself a stiff drink. 

————

The honeymoon tickets were non-refundable, of course. There’d been no reason to think that Poe would need to refund them. It was a two week lover’s package, marketed as the perfect getaway for newlyweds. So when Ben decided he’d had enough of the charade, he’d left Poe high and dry. The tickets were non-transferrable too, meaning he couldn’t even bring Jess along as emotional support. And he couldn’t let a three thousand dollar trip go to waste, no matter how much it hurt. 

Which is how Poe ended up there, in seat 7A, slumped over his tray table with his head in his hands. 

The flight to Cancun was packed, but when the steward asked if Poe wouldn’t mind giving up his second seat to another passenger, Poe motioned to the picture of Ben he’d taped to the headrest and stated it was full. The steward—a handsome, dark-skinned man whose name tag identified him as Finn—looked puzzled but didn’t push the topic. 

They took off shortly after, and Finn returned at cruising altitude, accompanied by a service cart and a stewardess named Rey. 

“Something to drink for you, sir?” Finn asked as Rey helped the people across from him.

Poe almost said no. He just wanted to be left to his misery. The flight appeared to be comprised, ironically, of mostly newlyweds and older couples looking to relive their youth. Outside the window, air currents glided over the 737’s wing. The sun glistened like there wasn’t a care in the world, and beneath the spattering of wispy clouds you could see the deep cerulean of the ocean. It was gorgeous. 

And Poe decided then that no, he _didn’t_ want to be miserable.

“Yes. I’d like a rum and coke for myself, and a vodka on the rocks for my lovely date here,” Poe looked pointedly at Ben’s picture. Finn raised his eyebrows but poured the drinks and moved the cart down the cabin. 

“To us,” Poe lifted a glass in each hand before Ben’s picture and clinked them together. Then he tilted his head back and downed them both in one go, earning him a strange look for Rey, assisting Finn one row up. Poe smiled at her. 

“Could I get another rum and coke please?”

—————

Three hours into the flight, he was at least nine rum and cokes in (with the occasional vodka shot mixed in for variety). Truthfully he’d lost count of his drinks long ago, and the little bottles filling his tray were swimming before his eyes and making it impossible to count. 

“Wish you were here,” he slurred to Ben’s picture, tilting the umpteenth travel-sized bottle of Captain Morgan back. 

“Would you like another?” Poe turned to see Finn smiling sympathetically down at him. He had another rum and coke already poured. Poe smiled up at the steward and took the offered drink. 

“You’re almost the perfect bar tender,” he said, swirling the drink in the plastic cup. 

“Almost?” Finn crossed his arms. 

“Yup,” Poe took a sip, wincing at the burn. “If you had a counter I could lean on and spill my woes, then you’d be perfect.”

“Counter, huh?” Finn looked thoughtful. “What about an empty drink cart?” 

Poe waved him off. “You’ve got other passengers.”

“I really don’t.” Finn motioned to the darkened cabin. The flight to Cancun was well over seven hours, and it had left SeaTac at half past eight in the evening. While Poe had consumed his body weight in liquor, the rest of the cabin had gone to sleep.

“The fasten seatbelt light is on.” Now he was just making excuses, Poe realized. He hadn’t _really_ wanted to spill his pathetic guts to the attractive steward who had managed to impeccably anticipate his drinking needs thus far. 

“There’s only two crew members in the cabin, and four seats. If you want a break from him—” Finn pointed to Ben’s smiling portrait. “—we’ve got an empty one. And before you ask, no, it’s not against regulations to remove a rowdy drunk passenger from the main cabin.”

His eyes twinkled as he spoke. Poe had been anything but rowdy; pathetic and obvious about his reasons, but not disruptive. But Jess wasn’t here to distract him. Perhaps the strange but alluring steward would be a good stand in.

“I need a word with the ol’ ball and chain first,” Poe said. He looked at Ben’s picture. “You don’t care if I go behind your back and confide in someone else like you did, do you? No? Great.”

Poe unbuckled his seat belt and staggered to his feet. Finn was there to catch him. Being drunk and trying to walk while on a plane was not a winning combination.

“Rey, this is Poe,” Finn introduced him as they reached the back of the plan. Rey looked up from the book she’d been reading. 

“Ah,” she said. “Nice to have a name to put to the face and about five dozen mini bottles of rum.”

Poe huffed a laugh. “No, the face is just Poe. The mini bottles belong to Ben.” He slumped in one of the open steward seats. Finn sat across from him, next to Rey.

"So who's Ben?" Finn asked, jumping right back to his bar keeping duties. 

And before Poe knew it he was spilling his story, telling them both about Ben, how he’d revealed he was leaving Poe for someone else less than a month before the wedding, how Poe couldn’t be sure if he was more angry or more heartbroken. 

“It’s okay to be both,” Finn said. “When my boyfriend left me I hated him and wanted him back at the same time. It was the worst time of my life.”

_Boyfriend._ Poe shouldn’t have been thinking about moving on only three weeks after he’d lost Ben, right? He needed time to process things. It wasn’t fair to scoop up someone else as a rebound. 

“ _Was_ the worst time?” Poe slurred, trying to appear sober and sincere regardless. He didn’t want to be miserable. Certainly he and Finn wouldn’t be seeing each other ever again after this flight. What was a little human connection?

“Oh yeah,” Finn said. “It’s been about a year. You work through it, you push forward. You know there’s always going to be someone else coming along." Finn smiled softly at him. Poe wasn’t imagining this, was his? The smoking hot steward wasn’t _hitting_ on him? 

Rey had gone back to her book. For all intents and purposes, it was just the two of them. 

Poe was nodding. “Yeah, there will be someone else.”

“And this trip? It’s a new start. You’re going to have a good time here despite Ben being a shitty person. The best revenge is not letting him ruin your once-in-a-liftime vacation.” 

“You are one hundred percent right,” Poe decided. To hell with rebounds, to hell with processing traumatic happenings. He had to jump straight over them. “I am going to have a good time. Starting with this.”

And without a second thought, Poe reached for Finn’s face and pulled him into a kiss. The other froze, perhaps too surprised to move. But then Finn regained his bearings and he pulled back. Poe, realizing what he had done, jerked away. Finn was staring at him with wide eyes.

“Um.”

Poe felt heat rush to his face. He had _not_ just drunkenly kissed the plane’s hot steward—except that he had. Oh _gosh_. 

“I—“ he tried to form an apology, but his tongue had stopped working. 

Rey had looked up from her book, eyes flicking between the two of them. Finn was silent. 

“I think it’s time for you to return to your seat,” she said quietly. Poe ripped at his seatbelt. He couldn’t agree more.

“Yup,” he said, all but leaping to his feet and stumbling back to his seat. Neither Rey nor Finn visited his seat for the rest of the flight. It was horrifyingly awkward, regardless. 

—————

The sun was just beginning to rise over the ocean when Poe scurried along the gang plank into Cancun National Airport and made his way towards the baggage claim. When they’d initially touched down, an almost-sober Poe had battled to be the first off the plane. The atmosphere on the 737 had become thick with a tension that other passengers could definitely sense, and the longer he stayed the thicker the air became. He’d knocked a young couple aside in his rush to leave.

Poe could have just continued on to his resort and forgotten the incident, but he felt so _awful_. Finn had been so unbelievably nice, and Poe had to ruin it by being a drunk asshole. The least he could do was be a drunk, sincerely apologetic asshole. 

Finn’s plane wasn’t scheduled to leave for another half an hour. That gave Poe plenty of time to track down a pen and a cocktail napkin and scribble an apology on it. He brought it to the dark-haired woman at the gate. 

“Can you give this to Finn? He’s a steward on that plane.” Poe pointed to the plane behind the glass. The woman gave him a strange look. “It’s nothing weird; you can read it. I just need you to get it to him. It’s important. Please.”

The woman took the napkin, read it, and nodded. “I’ll be sure he gets this,” she assured him. 

Poe let out a breath. He’d done what he could to resolve the conflict; he could breathe easy now. And what were the odds they’d ever meet again?

———— 

The odds, it turned out, were about 100%. Because after two weeks of sun, rum, and definitely not thinking about Ben _or_ Finn, what plane should Poe end up on but the one where Finn was working, once again. 

Poe had just plopped into his seat when he caught sight of a familiar flash of black hair and brown eyes. _Fuck._

And there was the light brown hair and soft face of Rey. _Double fuck._ They hadn’t seen him yet. He shielded his face with one hand at slipped into his seat, praying to every deity he could imagine that they please, _please_  not notice him. 

The gods had it out for him, apparently, because who should show up at his seat moments later but Finn. 

“Hey, stranger,” he said. His voice was even and his face was light; it was a strange look for someone addressing the drunk man who’d assaulted him a week ago to wear. 

“H-hey,” Poe’s voice cracked. He looked straight ahead. 

“So I got your note.”

“Oh?” His voice was far too high. This was the most uncomfortable Poe had ever felt.

“You put your number on it.”

_Triple fuck._ Poe was really going to need to have a talk with his drunk self. “Look, Finn, I’m so sorry. Being drunk isn’t an excuse, but I—“

Finn held up a hand. “You don’t need to apologize again. Your note said it all. It’s cool.”

“Oh,” Poe said again, relaxing. 

“But I couldn’t help but notice your area code. Bellevue?”

“Seattle now, actually. But yes. It was—I moved.” 

“What a coincidence. Because it just so happens that I live in Tacoma.” Finn was smiling.

“What are the odds?” Poe said, trying to move Finn along. This was either going some place very bad, or some place very…good. 

“And I’m free on Friday.”

Poe had a moment of panic. “Oh gosh, I didn’t ask you out too, did I?” 

Finn shook his head. “No. But you’re cute, and any guy who would apologize to a steward for kissing him while drunk can’t be all bad.”

Slowly, a matching smile grew on Poe’s face. “Just…no booze, right?”

Finn laughed. “Yeah. No drinks. Coffee, maybe?”

For the first time in over a month, Poe wasn’t thinking about Ben…at all. “It’s a date.”


End file.
